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Ask HN: Is forcing users to use a photo of themselves (Slack, etc.) ethical?

17 points by zucked ↗ HN
I work in a group of ~250 people nested within a much larger org. I have worked here for three years. We use Slack and have a company directory, both allow photo uploads.

Some people choose "things" or "characters" to as their profiles Slack - I've seen "Silicon Valley" characters, I've seen Star Wars characters, I've seen non-characters (pictures of flowers, mountains, etc.) Some people never upload anything at all.

After working here for three years and interacting with an individual occasionally, I just was able to put a real face to a slack account represented by Erlich Bachman. It got me thinking - how are other groups handling this?

I understand not everyone wants/likes to choose a photo that represents them. I also know that it's really hard to have a work conversation with Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes.

28 comments

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radiojasper
If you want a profile photo to be mandatory, you better be getting a photographer in to take company staff photos. Then make it mandatory for them to use this photo as their Slack profile pic. Add it to your company policy and inform HR that this should be included in the onboarding process.

Downside: it's costly to have professional photos taken with each new staff member and some process need to be changed.

Upside: you're no longer talking to Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes. Also it looks professional and it's in my opinion better for overall company culture.

tssva
Many companies already have photos taken as part of onboarding, usually no professional photographer involved, or require photos to be provided by remote employees if in person onboarding isn't required. They are used for company badges and uploaded to company directories. The directories are often tied into cloud services such as Slack where the picture becomes the user profile for that service. For Slack their SCIM API can be used to do this.
caseyohara
Another downside: when all of the profile photos are uniform and visually consistent, you can no longer quickly distinguish one person from another. At that point, profile pictures become less useful on the whole.
NoPicklez
That's just simply not the case.
resonator
As someone with moderate face-blindness, it would be true for me.
zhte415
It seems logical because we work in the same team and in fact do the same exact thing as each other and we also have the same penchant for avocado toast and Mac Book Airs. We even go to the same barber, although I have a slightly better haircut.
71a54xd
I just use photos from when I was in college haha.
exolymph
> I also know that it's really hard to have a work conversation with Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes.

Weird, I don't feel this way at all — maybe because I grew up on social media? I just associate people's profile picture's with them as a sort of symbol / personal emblem. Like if I'm chatting with someone with a profile picture of Calvin, I wouldn't interpreted that as me talking to Calvin or the person "wearing" Calvin's face, so to speak, more like me talking to someone with a Calvin button pinned on their lapel.

I don't think it would be unethical, in a workplace, to ask people to use real photos of themselves. But I also wouldn't want to work somewhere with that kind of culture.

sircastor
I agree. It doesn’t bother me. I’ve got a coworker who’s profile pick is Earthworm Jim, and I don’t ever picture him talking as such.
rl3
>I’ve got a coworker who’s profile pick is Earthworm Jim, and I don’t ever picture him talking as such.

That's a shame.

Mandatum
We have a professional photographer come in once per quarter, all new hires have their photo taken - and anyone who wants an update are able to join. For remote employees however, this just isn't possible. There are opportunities for this at team offsites or conferences, so with careful planning provided they're not too far offsite, it's still possible. Depends on the company.

There's also cultures, beliefs and personal preferences that just run diametrically opposed to having your headshot on every message you send. I think for those younger-looking people, having no profile photo at all can actually be beneficial in more traditional environments.

antifa
I think using photos of people that are not you should be disallowed. People who haven't seen Star Wars might think you actually look like Luke Skywalker or have a medical condition like Darth Vadar IRL or something.

I do think you should be required to upload a picture of something. If you want to be a blue flower, that's fine. Lots of people with the exact same "default avatar" make it additionally harder to distinguish large numbers of coworkers.

NoPicklez
Professional services employee here. Your company simply hires a photographer to take professional photos for its employees. You can use the photos for work or you can also use them for your LinkedIn profile as well.

In my opinion its better and healthy for company culture. We're moving more and more to collaborative tools rather than face to face, but it is still important to know the face of the person you're working with.

Shadowed_
It is not important. It is personal preference. I, for example, couldn't care less. I would be even fine with my colegues using nicknames like here on HN.
NoPicklez
In my line of work it doesn't make sense. I do need to know the names of my colleagues and we use photos in our proposals for work and across the office for new joiners and events.

Next we will allow our kids yearly photobook's to be full of avatars and nicknames.

I do think however that companies that wish to have photos of their employees used across work software should offer professional photos.

mchusma
We have everyone use a real photo in slack and emails. Over a hundred have been successful, without issue, without professional photographer. This is not as hard as others made it out to be.
matthewwolfe
I don’t have a solution but want to echo the sentiment that it is weird that people do not have a picture of themselves as their profile picture. Cartoon characters and random photos are very unprofessional IMO and I wish people would take the 5 minutes required to take a decent selfie and use that at least. Especially with everyone being remote, it’s nice to have a photo to match a face of a person that you will see in person very infrequently. As an amateur photographer I’ve thought about offering to take portraits at the next office gathering. Some people just take terrible photos of themselves. The classic shot with the camera too low pointed straight up the nostrils.
badrabbit
Some of us are not comfortable with out appearance and our work is not customer facing. You do not need to see my face, your needs to form opinions and assumpions about me based on appearances are what are "weird". I like how other types if profile pics convey the content of a persons character and personality better than their face.

Your sentiment only makes sense if you are customer facing and your face will decieve them into making decisions that benefit you. Still weird but that is how the world is and why sales people are attractive or have a likeable face generaly speaking.

matthewwolfe
I could not disagree more with this. It becomes much harder to associate a name with a face when working remotely if someone has a picture of a Pokémon as their profile picture. I don’t judge my coworkers based on their appearance but it makes it so much easier for me to form a connection when looking at a face rather than an arbitrary picture. Don’t need video on all the time, but it definitely helps
badrabbit
You don't need to associate a name with a face. You need to associate a name with a person. You need to explain your need for faces.
Shadowed_
If you are not going to see someone in person or it will be very infrequently, there is less need to match face to a person. And why would you match it anyway. I understand that some people like to match face to name/person and feel more comfortable but it is not real need. Work doesn't depend on that and comfort of one person should not be appeased on account of discomfort of another person.
cm2012
An avatar picture can be more representative of who you are than a picture!
blacksmithgu
I've noticed a visible split between product-facing teams and customer-facing teams where I've worked. The customer teams generally all used real selfies. The development teams all used random avatars and icons (myself included).

Frankly, it seemed to work fine in each context. You could always look up someone directly on the company registry if you want to put a face to a slack handle.

bjourne
Nope. This sounds to me like a "you" problem. And some people are uglier than others so that could be why they don't want to have their face on their avatar.
71a54xd
I'm ugly and non-photogenic to many so yeah, short of claiming a disability for being bald at 26 I'd say being forced to provide an image to my employer or some app is ethically questionable.

Granted, I really enjoy remote work now. Don't have to worry as much about being ugly anymore.

Can't wait for HN "am I too ugly for a faang" job to become a thing lmao.

_trampeltier
I have no picture of me just because of privacy. If you upload a picture to everything social media like today, you lose all right on the picture. Also some funny guy will make a DB with all face pictures, another guy will do some ML stuff and abuse your face picture and so on. No thanks.